Well as I recall, reports were that they did not shoot back, at least until something like half of them were destroyed? And that they really did not attack anything, typically they were just found sitting around gates and other warp anchors, doing nothing, until some taskforce or the other attacked them.
1 Like
They certainly shot back. Attacked anyone carrying a corpse or anyone that shot at them. From the look of it they had escaped the Abyss, although we didn’t know that at the time. Given the incident with Jamyl, who knows what would have happened.
1 Like
Returning fire is not attacking…
Ah yeah, I forgot they liked to smash and grab biomass, but again, as I recall the “deathballs” were said to be almost entirely inert. Shifting through news here, only source I could find on a short notice discussing the damaged Drifter fleets was from the Discourse… Which has a bit of a neutrality problem on this particular issue.
…Digging a bit further, Aurora Arcology actually sheds some more clearer light on this - the Drifters actually stopped firing back after losing enough ships - if I recall correctly, this was a source of much theorizing that some of the ships were possibly ‘slaved’ to one central ship, and after that ship was destroyed, they ceased function. And indeed following additional links in those news, it does dispute your claim that they were even interested in capsuleer biomass, at least the Isanamo sighting, or belligerent in those cases.
1 Like
So, this seems to be a good place to ask… why the Empress?
I may have missed something, as I was planetside most of the time dealing with other issues at the time the Empress was slain. I heard the same way the other baseliners heard. Was there ever a reason given why they attacked Empress Jamyl, of all people? It was a coordinated attack, I know, but all I had heard was that the Empress had dismissed claims of the dangers of Drifters. They certainly haven’t killed any other political leaders or… really anyone that I’ve heard of.
Why, of all people, after all they’ve apparently tolerated with unpredictable restraint, did they launch a concerted attack on the Empress (and, markedly, ignored the rest of the Empire since)?
1 Like
The drifters did indeed attack people. A few ships carrying corpses, including an Orca.
I made a joke about never inviting Drifters to funerals because of it, and we all laughed and laughed.
3 Likes
So, Teinyhr? It wasn’t so much “enough” ships as that, sometimes, after taking a particular loss, the fleet would go passive and inert for a while. We’d have a few minutes to destroy as many as we could, without taking otherwise-inevitable serious losses. Then they’d start up again, with a new “commander” unit.
I’m not sure we ever found a way to identify the commander, and sometimes we’d end up killing most of the fleet (repeatedly losing ours) before finding it, but usually we’d find it a couple times before the end.
It was an exploitable weak point, not a case of the Drifters being passive.
4 Likes
Well, that’s news to me. Did you ever bring this up outside of in-ARC, ARC-collaborative memos?
And Jandice’s Aurora News does state that the so-called “deathballs” - were they named so because the ships were practically ready to croak I wonder? - were practically passive unless engaged. From my observations, attacking ships carrying biomass was not a specific behaviour for the deathballs but Drifters in general are known to do so.
1 Like
Honestly, those were busy days, and I’d have to go through the forum activity on it. I believe we were actively disclosing their activity whenever we noticed changes, in addition to publishing recovered footage as rapidly as we could, but were also distracted by pilots showing more sympathy for cadaverous Jovian cyberzombies than for living humans.
4 Likes
Then you must be really easily distracted.
EDIT: Also, seriously, how many times are we going to go over this?
1 Like
I’m sorry for being busy?
And, yes, you’ve made yourself abundantly clear. I’m sorry, but we’re just going to have to disagree on these things.
2 Likes
Indeed. Would be neat if you didn’t always have to imply that I’d throw humanity under the bus when we disagree though.
1 Like
371 connections in one of our Drifter hole highways the other day.
371.
2 Likes
Wait, by in ‘one highway,’ is that a single Drifter system, or multiple of them in sequence? Or all five?
1 Like
That’s off the scale. Even if its all 5 that’s 75 each
1 Like
I’ll ask for clarification from our scanning team. Was sort of a passing comment one of them (whom I know to be reliable) said, and I was just like “…What?”
1 Like
Agreed. It sounds like there’s been some considerable variability in uiWH formation, but that’s still an escalation over an already-high number.
Before the seeming slow-down and the recent spike, the highest reliable per-hole count would be 20.
1 Like
Did we just break a record with 119?
1 Like
Well, the prior one was 104, so I believe yes.
Edit: if there’s a sudden collapse, please notify me immediately.
1 Like
There should be a C2 static, 1 per hole. Data I got from Pris Naari of Signal Cartel was 75 connections the other day. One question though. Those holes are short lived. When I scanned a complete system some of the ones I scanned had already collapsed when I warped to them. So you could sit in the middle of the system and keep scanning which would build up the numbers even though holes had collapsed. Worth checking.
1 Like